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OCR – The sport of 2016?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past couple of years who would have definitely heard of the rising popularity of OCR. Obstacle Course Racing is becoming the new big thing with events such as Tough Mudder and Spartan now appearing across the country. It’s muddy, tiring and both mentally and physically challenging but also a whole heap of fun!

Inspired by military training, these courses include a variety of different obstacles devised to test your stamina, agility, toughness and adversity of mud! Obstacles include mud crawls, climbing walls, monkey bars over water and cage crawls.

So if this still hasn’t put you off, here’s how you can get involved!

If you want to just have some fun and a great day with your friends, why not enter a Tough Mudder event. The whole point of these is not who can do it the fastest but who can do it together making it a great team building and bonding activity. The obstacles are designed to need more than one person to complete meaning the team will need to work together to get everyone across that finish line. This also means unlike marathons, triathlons, etc you do not need to be at peak fitness to join in the fun! Although fitness will play a huge part with the obstacles spread across a 10 mile course and physical strength needed to complete them you will not need to spend endless months training to get a good time. As long you can complete the course, success is yours!

However, if you do want to get serious about OCR there are race events in which you can partake to be in with a chance of a place at the Obstacle Course Racing World Championships. The four UK races in which you can qualify for this are; The Nuclear Races, The Suffering, Dirty Dozen Races and Nuts Challenge. For more information on how to qualify click here.

So now you want to get serious how do you train for an OCR event?

There are OCR racing teams across the country which you can join to help you train. They will have mini obstacle courses and equipment which can help replicate what you will be faced with on race day.

Alternatively, you can hire a personal trainer who will be able to do some research into the types of obstacles you need to train for and give you some exercises and drills to improve the skills needed to defeat them. You can also do this by yourself in the gym and use the equipment to boost your stamina and strength.

Also do not forget about the length of the course, not only do you need to be fit to tackle the obstacles on route but you need to be able to run the length of it. 10 miles is a long way and therefore you will need to do some running stamina training to make sure you are fit enough to get round.

The most important thing is that you enjoy it. Obstacle Course Racing is supposed to be enjoyable as well as challenging so get your mates together, sign up and have a go!

If you want to find out more about OCR racing read our guest blog from OCR World Championships Qualifier Dita Kotoulova.